Hot water heaters comprising tanks for storage of heated water have been described with means for tempering outgoing hot water drawn from the tank with cold water to achieve the delivery of tempered hot water at the tap for the purposes of safety and efficiency. Safety regulations may require hot water delivered at domestic tap outlets to be about 50° C. to avoid accidents associated with scalding, particularly of the aged and infants. However, because the storage of hot water can be more efficiently achieved by heating a smaller volume of stored hot water to a hotter temperature, e.g. 65° C., mechanisms for tempering the hot water drawn from the storage tank prior to delivery to a domestic tap have been proposed. One such arrangement is described in the Applicant's Australian patent No. 654107 where a hot water heater and vessel is provided with a conduit for directing cold water from the cold water inlet to the hot water outlet to reduce the temperature of the hot water delivered from the vessel to a tap outlet. Whilst this arrangement may work satisfactorily, such water heaters can present difficulties due to their bulky and asymmetrical nature and may be difficult to install in confined or congested spaces required in some domestic and commercial water heater installations, such as in town houses, units, apartments and small office kitchens. Moreover, the increased number of joins associated with fittings of the aforementioned prior art provide the potential for damaging or disruptive leakages where the fittings fail e.g. due to incorrect installation, corrosion, impact damage.
The above references to and descriptions of prior proposals or products are not intended to be, and are not to be construed as, statements or admissions of common general knowledge in the art.
It is an object of the present invention to ameliorate one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages of the prior art or to at least provide a useful alternative thereto.